Part Three - Third Wheel
“Taylor, I don’t understand any of this,” Bianca whined to me as we sat studying calculus together one blustery fall day during our freshman year of college.
“Join the club,” I muttered in response, narrowing my eyes at my calculus book as though that would force it to make more sense to me. Bianca rested her forehead on the table and articulated what I was thinking.
“Whatever possessed us to take Calc 3?”
“I don’t know,” I replied mournfully. “I think we’re just stupid.”
“Horribly, horribly stupid.” As Bianca’s muffled lament came from the other side of the table, I sighed and glanced at my watch. We had been in the library going over Calculus for nearly two hours and it wasn’t getting any easier.
“Okay, enough of this,” I declared, slamming my book shut and shoving it into my backpack. “Back to the dorm for us.” I stood up and tugged at Bianca’s arm as she looked at me lazily. “Come on.”
“Okay,” she finally agreed, hopping up and hastily shoving her own books into her backpack. “Calculus can die for today.”
“Just for today?” I questioned as we left the library and walked into the crisp New York air. I shivered and pulled my coat closer around my body, still not used to how different the climate was from Orlando. I really liked it, though. Oddly enough, one of my favorite things about NYU was the way autumn was actually cold. The novelty of this was not lost on a little Orlando girl such as myself.
“No, good point, it can die forever. Resurrection would suck.” She tucked a piece of faded blue hair behind her ear and we both paused to drop some change into the guitar case of a 20-something man playing next to a nearby tree.
“So what are your plans for tonight?” I inquired as we strolled through the rows of red and golden-leaved trees lining the walkway.
“Justin’s in town and has the night off, so we’re going out to dinner,” she responded, beaming and I realized she’d told me that earlier, and I had no idea how I’d managed to forget. Over the summer, Justin and Bianca had spent more and more time together until they’d finally become an official couple. The press knew very little about her, mostly because she refused to go to any public functions with him, but there had been a few pictures of her circulating the Internet and I was sure it was only a matter of time before everyone and their mother knew who she was. If I had been her, it would have been enough to keep me out of a relationship with the man, but she really seemed to care for him, so who was I to question it?
Despite my initial disapproval of their relationship, I was dealing with it quite well by this point. If you really think about it, a pop star boyfriend who was rarely around was really the best kind of boyfriend for Bianca to have from the point of view of someone in my position. He didn’t take her away from me too often, and I knew him, so at least I didn’t have to try and get used to a new person in our presence when he was around.
“Ah, the Justin,” I acknowledged with a nod. “That sounds exciting.”
“Your sarcasm is not lost on me, Miss Levitt. I see right through your innocent exterior.”
“Blast. Foiled again,” I bemoaned dryly.
“Damn straight.”
I chuckled and Bianca and I walked the rest of the way back to our room discussing our plans for Halloween - which consisted almost entirely of us carving pumpkins and singing Christmas carols as per usual - and whether or not we should wear costumes. Bianca’s parents had never allowed her to go trick or treating, but she’d always liked dressing up anyway.
“I definitely think you should dress up, Tay,” Bianca informed me. I pulled a face. Prancing around wearing silly costumes was not my things. I think this all comes back to my being strange, but not as strange as Bianca. I was strange enough to sing Christmas carols on Halloween, but not strange enough to dress up as a lemur while doing it.
“No, I think not.”
“Taylor, sometimes you are very little fun, you know that?”
“Sorry. Sometimes you’re too much fun and I worry about pulling a muscle. I don’t know how Justin has avoided injury thus far.”
“Speak of the devil.” A grin spread across my friend’s face as we approached our residence hall and spotted her boyfriend skulking in the shadows with a baseball cap pulled down over his face and accompanied by a man the size of a large refrigerator. She greeted him, but they didn’t hug or kiss each other in greeting, as they never did while in public. “Hey baby.”
“Hey yourself,” he responded with a grin, grabbing her hand and giving it a quick inconspicuous squeeze. “Hey, Taylor.”
“‘Lo,” I greeted him with a yawn of indifference, folding my arms across my chest.
“You ready to go?” Justin questioned Bianca. She shook her head. Silly question. Bianca was never ready to go until about an hour after you’d forgotten you wanted to go anywhere in the first place.
“I need to change real quick. Come on up to the room and chat with Taylor while I get ready.”
“Okay.”
The two lovebirds (it’s a disgusting word, but they really were lovebirds) strode towards the door, not even casting a second glance my way.
“What if I don’t want to be chatted with?” I grumbled as I followed. The only response I got was a chuckle from the bodyguard, whose name I am ashamed to admit I didn’t know.
Bianca and I lived on the third floor of an all-girls’ residence hall at New York University. Justin had only been there once since we’d arrived, but quite frankly, I was surprised the entire hall didn’t know about him already. Girls talk a lot, but somehow Bianca was able to keep her relationship a secret from all of them. To this day, I have no clue how she did it. The girl amazes me.
We arrived at our room and Justin plopped down on Bianca’s bed while the bodyguard hovered outside the doorway and Bianca ran to the bathroom to change her clothes and touch up her make up.
The room was dead silent as I hung back by the door, feeling strangely uncomfortable in my own room. The last time Justin had been there, Bianca was there the whole time and at home he was never in my room. It felt odd having him in the place where I slept without someone else there with me. I know that sounds odd and senseless, but it probably was.
“So, Taylor,” he finally broke the silence with a small smile.
“So, Justin,” I replied with another yawn.
“You know, you need to stop yawning when you talk to me. I’m starting to think you find me painfully boring.”
“Who says I don’t?” I shrugged and gave him a small smile as I decided to go ahead and settle myself on my own bed. Unfortunately the room had no room for a couch, so beds and desk chairs were really the only options when it came to sitting. Justin chuckled.
“I don’t remember you being this sarcastic back when I first became friends with your brother,” he observed.
“I was ten. I had yet to fully develop my acidic personality,” I informed him matter-of-factly. To my surprise and mild bewilderment, this statement elicited a hearty guffaw from Mr. Timberlake. I frowned. “Why is that funny?”
“Acidic personality?” Justin repeated with a grin. “Hardly. You just put up walls.” I raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, really? I didn’t realize you were an expert on the inner workings of my mind.” My arms folded across my chest again, an unconscious reaction to what had just been said to me. He shrugged.
“I’m not. That one’s just pretty obvious.”
The door swung open in unison with my jaw and Bianca came striding back into the room and settled herself on Justin’s lap. She looked back and forth between us. “What did I miss?”
“I don’t have an acidic personality, I just put up walls,” I recapped shortly. She blinked at me.
“Says who?”
“Your boyfriend the psychologist.”
“It was just an observation!” Justin protested. “Didn’t mean to offend.”
“I’m not offended.” I was mildly offended, but not enough to make a big deal out of it. I didn’t put up walls, though. I was sure of that. Mostly I was just sort of baffled that Justin had paid enough attention to me to form such an opinion.
“No, she’s not offended,” Bianca backed me up. “If she were offended she’d either be screaming about you or ignoring you. Hope you never offend her.” She accentuated this with a quick peck on the lips and I involuntarily shuddered. Something about Bianca expressing affection to her boyfriend in front of me always made me feel awkward and uncomfortable, even when it was just a peck.
“Oh, I do,” Justin stated with mock solemnity. I stuck my tongue out at him. I always considered the tongue as a great response to anything you don’t have a real response to.
“Anyway, we should be off.” She hopped up off Justin’s lap and pulled him off the bed. “What are you going to do tonight, my dear Taylor?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Probably just sit around and stare at the ceiling trying to psych myself up to write that essay I have due in Shakespeare on Friday.”
“That’s so depressing,” Bianca pouted. “Can’t you find yourself something more exciting to do so I don’t feel guilty for leaving you here all alone?”
“No,” I replied succinctly.
“Hey, why don’t you come with us?” Justin suggested completely out of the blue. My jaw very nearly dropped for the second time in five minutes, but I settled for a mere grunt of surprise.
“No, I wouldn’t want to im-“
“Yeah, Taylor, come!” Bianca interrupted me.
“But you guys are having your time together and I don’t want to-“
“Come!” Bianca insist. “Please, Tay? Please!”
***
I don’t know why, but somehow I always managed to get sucked into whatever Bianca wanted me to do. I believe I’ve mentioned this previously, but that night when I actually accompanied her and Justin to some little café only to sit there and watch them make googly eyes at each other all night and fight the desire to vomit was a perfect reminder of my inability to say no to Bianca’s most torturous requests.
Eventually, I ended up alone at the table while Bianca talked to some guy from her anthro class she’d spotted alone in the corner and Justin sat with her, holding her hand and showing her other small signs of affection as if to say to the guy, “She’s mine, so watch yourself.” Bianca had been come increasingly more friendly to other people once we’d gotten to college, so this sort of behavior was not unusual on her part.
So I sat there and felt sorry for myself as I often did at that point in my life and watched them act all enamored with one another. Part of me was happy for them and part of me wished that Justin would die a horrible, bloody death so I wouldn’t have to feel bad about myself. Why Bianca and Justin made me feel bad about myself was beyond me, but it did and I was bitter.
“Try not to look so enthused.”
I dropped the straw I’d been twirling in my drink and looked up at the lank figure sitting down next to me. Somehow in the midst of my thoughts of painful death I had failed to notice that the subject of these thoughts had left his girlfriend’s side.
“What are you doing?” I asked plainly. He frowned.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, why aren’t you still over there with Bianca?”
“Oh.” He shrugged. “You looked bored, so I told her I was going to come keep you company.”
“Ah.” I nodded my understanding and returned to twirling my straw around in my drink.
“So how are you Taylor? You never just talk about you, you always talk about you in relation to Bianca.”
“I’m fine.” I shrugged. There he went again with the psychoanalyzing. I didn’t understand why he cared. Where is there a rule that says you have to take a deep seated interest in your brother’s little sister/girlfriend’s best friend?
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Fine.”
“Good. How’s school going for you?”
“Fine.”
“Good.”
Silence.
“So what are you and Bianca doing for Halloween?” he questioned and I shrugged again.
“The usual, carve pumpkins and sing Christmas carols. It’s a tradition. She wants me to wear a costume too, but we’ll see if that actually happens.”
“You don’t want to?” he asked with a chuckle and I shook my head.
“Not really. What am I gonna be? A porcupine?”
“You could be a sullen teenager. I bet you could pull that off really well.”
“Oh, you’re hilarious.”
“I know.”
At this point, Bianca returned from her venture into the world of socializing and saved me from the prying questions of her annoyingly interested boyfriend. “Justin, don’t you think Taylor would look dead sexy with dark red highlights in her hair?” Leave it to Bianca to ask random questions and make me feel even more awkward than I thought possible.
“Uh...” Justin was obviously as confused by this opening line as I was.
“We were talking about it the other day,” Bianca explained. “I think she should put red highlights in her hair-“
“She thinks I should forever damage my hair by dying it,” I interrupted.
“Shut your trap, it would look hot. Don’t you agree?” She looked to Justin for approval and he just sort of stammered in response.
“Um...I...well...I don’t know. Taylor, do you want to put red highlights in your hair?”
“No.” I glared at Bianca, who returned the favor.
“Then I don’t think she should do it,” he reasoned in lieu of any real response to Bianca’s question. She sighed and shook her head.
“You people are so boring.” She stood and headed towards the door, and Justin and I followed.
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